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IBM Germany Leaving Vista for Linux 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-just-seems-strange dept.
UltimaGuy writes "During a presentation on IBM's involvement with Open Source, Andreas Pleschek from IBM in Stuttgart, Germany, who heads open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe for IBM made a very interesting statement..."Andreas Pleschek also told that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. That means that IBM will not use Windows Vista for their desktops. Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platform. Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista." "
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IBM Germany Leaving Vista for Linux More

IBM Germany Leaving Vista for Linux

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  • Redhat? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by weg ( 196564 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:00PM (#14875531)
    Why Redhat? Didn't IBM cooperate with SuSE so far, or has this changed when SuSE was taken over by Novell?

    • Re:Redhat? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bogaboga ( 793279 )
      That's my question too! Why RedHat? SuSE, in my opinion, is better than RedHat both on the server and desktop. This is not to say it (SuSE) has no issues at all. I find that its YaST is too slow and looks ancient, not to mention the fact that it will run through all those config scripts even when no configuration is changed at all!

      • Re:Redhat? (Score:4, Funny)

        by LehiNephi ( 695428 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:09PM (#14875637) Journal
        I'm sure they have good reasons for choosing RedHat. Better support, maybe, or lower price, or perhaps they have a business arrangement with them.

        Geez, you guys remind me of the techs at userfriendly [userfriendly.org].

      • Boy, doesn't this subthread prove Dell right? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tran ( 721196 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:43PM (#14876033)
        The top level post was a clear enough question regarding business relationships, but one level down the argument already is about which distro is better.

      • Re:Redhat? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Macka ( 9388 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @04:37PM (#14878255)
        I find that its YaST is too slow and looks ancient, not to mention the fact that it will run through all those config scripts even when no configuration is changed at all!
        It's not still doing that is it? I stopped using SuSE years ago and that was one of my main beefs. If I wanted to set something up by hand I'd have to go way out of my way to find out where all the proprietary-SuSE-only config files / scripts were stashed or risk having YaST obliterate my changes the next time I wanted to do something as mundane as change a user config. I hated YaST with a passion for that very reason. I always recommend Redhat to customers now.

        • Re:Redhat? (Score:3, Informative)

          by maxwell demon ( 590494 )
          You can tell YaST to leave your config alone (not only globally, but also specifically for certain configs).
          Also, you can tweak your configs with xy.local files (xy is the name of the corresponding config file), which will be read in addition to the YaST-generated xy file, and never be touched by YaST (I'm not sure if that's possible for all config files, though).

    • Re:Redhat? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just FTR: IBM has an ownership stake in Novell

    • Re:Redhat? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mytec ( 686565 ) * on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:57PM (#14876170) Journal

      So, why does it matter that it's Redhat instead of SuSE or any of the other 100+ distros? Looking at the bigger picture, it would seem GNU/Linux is advancing. Isn't that more important than the particular distro?

    • I thought they had their own internal version myself..

  • news denied (Score:5, Informative)

    by baxterux ( 575852 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:00PM (#14875534) Homepage
    heise a german news site has just published an articles saying IBM denied the claims http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/70532 [heise.de]

    • I wish we had an audio recording... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:09PM (#14875642) Homepage
      Companies not ready for disclosure of things of this nature almost always flatly deny them occuring- just witness XGI being bought by ATI recently; both companies denied they were doing it- but they did it anyway. I've little doubts that they may have done this- they've been building up to it for several years now. Now whether it's actually going to happen, on the other hand, remains to be seen.
    • IBM disclaims rumors around one complete-transferred to Linux sound reports over the LinuxForum in Denmark on Groklaw and Neoseeker a IBM coworker in a lecture explained there, IBM wants to use in the future Linux on the host computers. Contracts with Microsoft were already quit, which coming Windows version Vista will not be used at IBM. Announcement In a statement opposite heise open got IBM straight the role of open SOURCE often commodity and open standard in the enterprise. One began to change the PC jo

    • Re:news denied (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Crazy Man on Fire ( 153457 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:22PM (#14875766) Homepage
      There's no way that IBM can convert to Linux until it has ported Lotus Notes. So far, employees using Linux have to run Notes using Wine. It is not very stable and some functions don't work. Until I see a Linux port, I won't believe this news.

      • Re:news denied (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Dare nMc ( 468959 )
        > no way that IBM can convert to Linux until it has ported Lotus Notes.

        Web Client!
        I have seen the notes web client grow to look almost exactly like the desktop app, only feature I see missing is archiving. With the company I work for, in their Sarbanes-Oxley related transisition, their already trying to downplay the use of email archives as acceptable. So I look for it to be banned at my company within a year, removing the need for supporting that PC app all-together.
        The other obvious missing ingredian

      • Funny you should say that... (Score:5, Informative)

        by wild_berry ( 448019 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:45PM (#14876050) Journal
        Funny you should say that: I saw Ross Burton write on his blog [burtonini.com] (via the Debian blog planet [debian.org]) of a Groklaw post about Linux Forum Day 2 [groklaw.net], from which Mr Burton quotes:
        At the end of the presentation, Andreas Pleschek revealed that the laptop he used for the presentation was running a pre-release of their new platform, the Open Client. It is actually a Red Hat work station with IBM's new Workplace Client, which is built in Java on top of Eclipse. Because of Eclipse, it runs on both Linux and Windows, and they have been able to reuse the C++ code in Lotus Notes for Windows to run it natively on Linux via Eclipse. Internally in IBM, for years, they have had a need to run Lotus Notes on Linux, and now they can. And they will offer it to their customers. Workplace uses Lotus Notes for mail, calendar, etc. and Firefox as their browser. For an office suite, they use OpenOffice.org.


        It seems that the new IBM thing, Workplace has Notes running natively.

      • Re:news denied (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MemoryDragon ( 544441 )
        That to my knowledge is one part of the workplace desktop.. The desktop more or less is an eclipse based universal application shell it even has an office integration. I saw the thing during a presentation at IBM a while ago, cool stuff.

      • Re:news denied (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Chemicalscum ( 525689 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @01:11PM (#14876314) Journal
        There's no way that IBM can convert to Linux until it has ported Lotus Notes

        They have, the new client is called Hannover named after the location of the IBM technical forum where it was first announced:

        http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/hanno ver----announcing-the-next-post-7.0-version-of-lot us-notes [edbrill.com]

        It is based on the Java Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) used by Workplace the Notes C++ code has been rewritten as an Eclipse plugin. The code can then be compiled to work on any platform that eclipse runs on; Linux, AIX , Mac OSX and Windows. I think the next Notes client release which will be based on Hannover is due later this year as Notes V7.0.

      • >There's no way that IBM can convert to Linux until it has ported Lotus Notes.

        IBM Workplace has Notes client plugin. 2.6 is nice and fast too.

    • Re:news denied (Score:5, Funny)

      by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:31PM (#14875893)
      I checked the site, but it was in German.

      Laut Berichten über das LinuxForum in Dänemark ...

      It appears that Laut Berichten announced at LinuxForum in Denmark that they are switching to Super DOS.

      I hope that clears things up.
    • Well, the Linux part is denied, but the more important part (IMHO) was revealed. IBM is moving away from MS Office to Eclipse and OpenOffice.org. They're also using the FireFox browser.
  • Remember IBM sold its consumer PC division to Lenovo, so this will only be on their high end workstations. Good for IBM for doing it, but not such a big deal.

  • Now, is that IBM Germany, or more Worldwide? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:00PM (#14875536) Homepage
    Either is compelling as a statement from Big Blue, but the latter of the two is much more devastating
    as it means QUITE a bit of revenue on MS' part.

    • Re:Now, is that IBM Germany, or more Worldwide? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:13PM (#14875684) Journal

      Either is compelling as a statement from Big Blue

      IBM's CIO has already made clear that IBM's direction for its employees' desktops is Linux. Back in 2004 he released a statement that IBM would standardize on Linux desktops by the end of 2005, but it was quickly realized that was too ambitious a goal. There's just too much stuff in IBM that is tied to Windows. Still, it's widely recognized that Linux *is* the direction, worldwide, even if there isn't a specific timeline in place.

      As an IBMer who uses Linux as his desktop platform for work, I read these sorts of announcements with glee because they just reinforce the message internally that new internal IT systems should not require Windows and that old ones that do require Windows need to be replaced. At present I still have to keep a Win2K VMware image around to deal with the occasional Windows-specific internal tools, and to deal with the occasional Office doc that OOo can't manage. As more groups within IBM move more aggressively away from Windows, however, I expect to need that image less and less, and someday I won't need it at all.

      ObDisclaimer: I'm an IBM employee, but not a spokesperson. Everything I've said about IBM's plans and policies is just my vague memories of publicly-released information. If you find official statements that contradict mine, I'm wrong.

  • I'm not surprised (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:01PM (#14875537)

    I can't say I'm surprised. In conjuction with Microsoft's involvement with the Trusted Computing Group, and the TPM hardware appearing in new PCs [slashdot.org], the next version of Windows (Vista) will solidify Microsoft's near total control over the desktop.

    Having TPM hardware in the machine at all is bad enough... if you move to Vista there will (quite literally) be no escape. The computer you purchase will not belong to you and will be deliberately designed to be secure against you, rather than for you. Vista will be the software component of this lockdown.

    Now look at IBM -- for them to base their business around Vista would make them *completely* under the control of Microsoft. Their desktops could be secretly backdoored, their data locked down and only accessible with the permission of Microsoft. 100% Bill's bitch. Why submit to that when you can (and are) pay off Red Hat to work on a Trusted Computing version of the Linux kernel (google for the project)... and have that kind of control yourself?

    Smaller companies and normal consumers though... that's a different matter. They are going to be screwed royally with the introduction of Vista. They just don't realise it yet, and won't until they've paid over their cash to Dell or HP. DRM throughout the system (apps and data), and all under the control of Uncle Bill and his Rights Management Servers.

    • >Now look at IBM -- for them to base their business around Vista would make them *completely* under the control of Microsoft.

      Note that this applies to All users of Vista, not just IBM.

      Just in case you were thinking of upgrading.....
    • IBM could do this now, there's a Security chip [ibm.com] in most IBM laptops, Heck, the security tech used in TCPA was Developed by IBM [zdnet.com]

      It would be suicide for them to drop MS, because everyone and their uncle will just switch to Dell, and they know it. He's probably talking about what they are doing internally at IBM, which I wouldn't be surprised if it was running AIX or some in house mainframe system.
    • You know, IBM *does* like TPM [trustedcom...ggroup.org]

    • FUD (Score:3)

      by geekee ( 591277 )
      Please mod down this FUD

  • Leader of the pack (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:01PM (#14875541)
    "Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista."

    And why should they? What does Vista give IBM that their present solution doesn't?
    • That statement is almost meaningless.... "No one will upgrade to Vista" doesn't mean that new machines won't be bundled with Vista. Once Vista is out, Microsoft won't license new copies of Vista, and all new PCs will include it.

  • IBM starts using IBM Workplace (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:01PM (#14875548)
    All I can say is, it's about time!

    http://www-142.ibm.com/software/workplace/products /product5.nsf/wdocs/workplaceoverview [ibm.com]

  • HAL (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xzanthar ( 543209 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:02PM (#14875553)
    If IBM is not going to move to Windows Vista, does that mean that more people will see some more of the advantages of moving to Linux?

  • Somewhere in Redmond... (Score:5, Funny)

    by One Louder ( 595430 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:03PM (#14875575)
    ...the chairs start flying.

    Won't somebody at IBM please think of the chairs?

  • I think its A matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MrShaggy ( 683273 ) <chris.anderson@hush . c om> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:06PM (#14875605) Journal
    We have seen that the open-document-format take hold, and now the big iron is pulling away from MS, shortly after. Given some more time, I think that we will see this trend continue. We will see more and more with ODF, taking MS's place. Even to the point of having document converters, to go from .docto .odf. This also the time to see the movement of the massess to a linux environment. I think you will see tax-programs, et al. moving because of the ODF as well. I think that there will be a lot of script-style viri as well that will go throuigh everyones documents, ala the excell virus. The only reason that all this stuff didnt happen on larger scale, was because of the different formats. But if every Joe-Linux Distro includeed a nice easy-top-use office, and all that, it would be easier to switch. MS will become another smaller company.. It's innovations were in the 90s. Im ure that they will keep up for some time.. But this is a huge financial blow to them.

  • Exaggerations! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:08PM (#14875635) Homepage
    Its BS to say that "no one will upgrade" to Vista. Are you telling me that software developers will not be using Vista at all? It's a ridiculous notion for a company that develops hundreds of products for the Windows OS.

    • They might just leave Windows support at the XP level (Not likely, mind, but there's nothing other than potential customer alienation to keep them from doing that...). They might require only the Windows product development teams to have Vista, etc. and require everyone else to use RedHat and Workplace (Which is very likely...)- if you're not doing Windows development, you may not get to upgrade to Vista (Which, in a company that size, is effectively "no one will upgrade"...).

    • Re:Exaggerations! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Penguinoflight ( 517245 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:32PM (#14875899) Journal
      IBM will not be forced to upgrade to vista. Their software runs server side, and almost all of it is supported directly by IBM. There is no reason in fact for IBM to support Vista, and by doing so support Microsoft.

      Think of it this way: If nobody supports vista, nobody will have to support vista! While IBM moving away from microsoft is a move in the right direction, IBM will not be able to crush Vista on their own, they will need help.

      The only group that will need to support Vista is game developers. Most (with exception of Epic, iD, and a few others) have gone so far to avoid opengl, and embrace directx, they will be forced to adopt Vista just to keep things moderately insecure (Microsoft will strategically drop security support for xp soon enough).

      It should be noted, there is no reason for game devs to support windows; It's far too insecure for gaming, and that wont get any better. A move to linux (and with it FreeBSD by binary compatibility) would allow devs to go with only 2-3 major platforms: OpenGL for PS3, linux/PC, and possibly nintendo revolution. Of course you would have to support directX for xbox360, but over time the extra cost to develop for microsoft would probably kill their projects.

      We have come to the point where the time to move away from microsoft is NOW, but unfortunately it will take a while for vendors and developers to realize that.

      • "It should be noted, there is no reason for game devs to support windows"

        You mean other than the fact that Windows is on ~90% of all PCs. I really don't think that's a market they are going to just give up on. It is obviously well worth their effort to develop games for Windows.

        "It's far too insecure for gaming"

        I can see an OS being too insecure for doing financial transactions or storing personal information, but gaming...

        • You can't using windows for gaming due to the insecure nature: Running Spybot S&D, Norton antivirus, and microsoft firewall will bring your system to a halt (I know, Norton is a cheapshot). The thing is windows just need too many helper applications to run reasonably, and if you're going to spend all the time making sure everything is correct why should you have to pay Microsoft through the nose for that responsibility?

          90% of PCs run a version of windows that will be unsafe, and unsupported (no direct
          • You have not convinced me... at all. Most PC gamers (especially casual gamers) play on their PCs because they already own them. They dont want to spend money on a console just to play games when they already have a PC. I would bet everything I own that game manufacturers will not give up on the Windows platform any time in the near future. All of the arguments you just made were also made when XP came out. XP wasn't going to support older software etc. I don't have anything against Linux, by the way. It's j
      • Thats not going to happen, at least not in any kinda of short time frame. However, you've got a point, going only DirectX is a dead end. Fact is, DirectX is only Windows and XBox, that means you need to recode to OpenGL for Mac, Linux, PS, Nintendo, etc etc. Moreover, Windows supports OpenGL (XBox can rot in hell). So OpenGL gives you the largest potential customer base of the two. That said, DX offers a very large helper library for sound, input devs, etc. OpenGL's GameGLUT (see GLUT 3.7) takes a step towa

  • Most IBM slavelings don't care about windows vis redhat vis suse, if only they would dump Lotus notes client everybody would be a lot happier.

  • :)

    BTW you can't leave what you haven't joined and MS Windows Vista isn't out yet. They're leaving Microsoft OS...

  • Oh happy me! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ZX81 ( 105194 )
    Great news, it's about time that someone started rolling Linux out onto the Desktop in a large enterprise.

    Someone has to be the beta tester! :)
  • Not surprised that IBM rolls their own Linux, Cisco does as well though it's mainly for their servers.
  • I wonder - does this imply that Leveno's machines will now be in Linux-supporting default configurations?

    I realise the PC business is being sold, but I imagine IBM internally uses IBM-style PCs and I hazard that this might well continue on to Leveno PCs. If they're all moving to Linux, then the hardware must support that.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • Still Just Noise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:27PM (#14875832)
    I think it's all just posturing so far. But would be a great move if it happened.

    The problem for any corporation updating to Vista is that you rather have to replace most of your hardware along the way as well.

    And upgrade your memory. Over on The Inquirer [theinquirer.net] they're reporting that Vista consumes 800MB of RAM while idling. This is absolutely insane to someone who first started using computers in the early 1970's. There just isn't that much stuff that an Operating System should be doing. And yes, that really is 3X XP's current requirements, the thought of which certainly is warming Intel's little heart.

    Seems to me if MS wants to keep IBM in the fold they should be offering to buy them all new desktops.

    • Re:Still Just Noise (Score:2, Informative)

      by plague3106 ( 71849 )
      The problem for any corporation updating to Vista is that you rather have to replace most of your hardware along the way as well.

      Really? Might want to double check [microsoft.com] that. Current mid range or higher cpu, 512MB ram (which I've been recommending for years now). You likely WON'T need a high end graphics card, because Areo doesn't come with the business versions of Vista. Actually I seem to recall people saying the exact same thing when windows XP came out. Hmm...

      And upgrade your memory. Over on The Inquire
    • Why would Intel care if it is a memory hog? Or do you equate CPU with memory? Or are you just a troll?
    • 800MB? When Win2K runs in 128MB, with Winamp and Opera etc?

      Fuck that. That's so crap, I doubt even the warez kiddies will want it.

    • Re:Still Just Noise (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )
      I started using computers in the 1970s. I'm a fan of bloatware OSes, I want 70s features in my OSes. I want relational databases built in and available to all apps (like DB2 on an IBM mainframe of RDB on VMS box. I want symbionts and PFS so that I can do complex print bundling rather than just simple spooling. I want and a clear separation between operations and administration. I want built in OS level compilers that support complex data structures across apps and in my databases.

      If the PC guys keep it
    • Oh, the Inquirer reports that vista eats 800 MB of RAM?

      What makes you think that a product in development doesn't have a memory leak? What makes you think that Vista snapshots don't have the debug symbols compiled in?

      And let me be the first to say that I'm not sure if that screenshots in that page really means the system is eating 800 MB of ram or they're also counting the filesystem cache as we do in linux.

      Please, wait for the vista release and *then* speak.
  • Its global, and pervasive.

    This has been coming for a long time. Remember that IBM has been one of the largest forces behind Eclipse. Not because its great as a development platform -- because its got potential as a great APPLICATION platform.

    Roughly 50% of the large enterprise email market is using IBM Lotus Notes. You may not like it, but its true. Different studies wieght it differently by a few points to either side. Pick the study and you can find all kinds of results. The counts are close enough that the difference is accounted for by what you count as client use, who gives you the numbers, etc. For example, MS typically likes to count anyone who owns Office as an Outlook user which will skew the numbers quite a bit. Regardless, the market is split nearly in have between MS and IBM for that market with small shares going to a few other players (like Groupwise).

    * Keep in mind, we're talking LARGE ENTERPRISE here. Annecdotes about companies under 500,000,000 in gross revenue don't count.

    IBM has been pushing Linux at the desktop in their offices where possible for at least three years. One thing holding them back has been that their own platform, Notes, doesn't run easily on Linux natively. The reason isn't Notes -- which was built to be cross platform, resulting in some often critisized UI choices. The reason is the same as so many other companies don't support Linux for the workstation. Its difficult to make a generic installation and maintenance solution.

    With Eclipse as the base, IBM has spent a few years on their new WORKPLACE products. The grand plan is pretty different from what they've ended up with, but they are very close to roll out of their "Hannover" product which is Lotus Notes (actual, real code - not rewritten or made compatible) with a UI done in Eclipse. On top of that, Eclipse becomes Workplace Rich Client when you add a few plug in layers which allow managment, server based rollout and maintenance, and other portal stuff they use.

    It also handles off-line use and synchronization for out of office and traveling.

    It works. I've seen it. I've played with it.

    What that means is that their "killer apps" -- those applications critical to the success of people working in IBM offices don't even need to be "ported". They're in Lotus Notes applications already and keep working as they have. Also, their Email client works as it always has.

    Add to this that Workplace has Open Office based applications built into it as well, and a new thing called an "Activity Explorer" (which IMO is going to be the most important NEW thing from them).

    Tie it all together and they can do everything they need to do without a Windows based application. They've cut themselves free entirely.

    What IBM has done is not just TALK about making a linux desktop workable -- they've created the missing pieces so that they can actually support their own massive workforce with such a rollout.

    Bravo to them.

    • Re:As a long time IBM partner & watcher.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @03:43PM (#14877770) Journal
      because its got potential as a great APPLICATION platform.

      I think that for Eclipse to be fully embraced by Linux application developers, the CDT plugin [eclipse.org] will need to mature some more. I'm not seeing Java become more adopted.

      Anyway, I tried working with Eclipse + CDT, but for medium-sized applications programmed in C (> 5000 lines) it's not really nice.

      • The indexer is very slow (but that's being worked on) and in my experience, gets in the way of other background processes. Turn it off and you lose
      • Refactoring is extremely limited, not even 'extract method'.
      • Editor is not equal to the Java editor yet.
      • "Clicking through" (i.e. CTRL + left-click) takes you to a header file, while often you want to see the implementation. The workaround is to right-click and choose Open Definition, but don't do this immediately. You might end up in a similarly-named function which you didn't include through a header file.
      • Hovering over a function will show the start of the function definition, but only if the function body is located in the same file. Otherwise nothing will be shown but the function name.
      • Hovering over a constant will show nothing.

      On the other hand, these guys are REALLY working on it. I especially applaud Doug Schaefer [blogspot.com] and the rest of the team too, of course.

  • what about the US (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Douglas Simmons ( 628988 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:37PM (#14875980) Homepage
    I'm glad to see other countries widely adopting Linux, but it seems a disporportionate number is coming from the rest of the world versus the US (with the occasional exception). Is this because the US is somehow more open-source-close-minded and anti free (and better tasting) lunches?

  • Cancelled MS contracts? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pfaut ( 18898 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:39PM (#14875992) Homepage
    Why do I sense that this will spawn the mother of all BSA audits?

  • Lets hope they document the process (Score:3)

    by merc ( 115854 ) <slashdot@upt.org> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:42PM (#14876015) Homepage
    It would be nice if there were documented evidence of large enterprise migrations to Linux for the desktop. I work in an I.S. capacity for a very large health care organization, (7B/year, >10,000 employees), recently the head of Information Systems has been hitting up our group to find ways to reduce costs. I wanted to point to the obvious use of using alternative operating systems but at this point too much of our infrastructure depends on niche software, such as Remedy and PVCS Tracker for tracking large projects and I.S. requests.

    Additionally there is a very heavy use of MS-Office, especially Word and Excel. It would be valuable to see what the large-scale effect of drop-replacing an alternative Office product such as OO.o has on an a large business -- especially with regards to training.

    I think IBM's idea of migrating in piecemeal is a good one.
    • As someoone that has previously been heavily involved with Remedy. Last time I checked there are now web agents that you can deploy and have no problems with. It may not have an agent for your products in use but it will be a matter of time for the most part.
    • The key is applications, and reducing your dependency on Windows-only applications. Web-based apps are one part of this. The other is getting onto OpenOffice.org.

      Once you've got people running happily on those, you can then migrate people.

  • ... big ass discount. It's almost like telling MS, give us a better price, or will switch. And of course MS will go as low as possible to prevent a switch. And IBM saves.

    • Re:This has just one purpose.... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nope, this is not a play for a discount. Besides trying to push their flagship product, IBM is really tired of dealing with MS's crap. Incedentally, IBM gave MS close to 10% of their reported revenue in licensing fees last year. MS does not give IBM much of a discount on their products. This move will save IBM billions of dollars, lets hope they dont fall for the MS bait-n-switch trick.

  • Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:48PM (#14876078) Homepage
    Because IBM is big? Many companies are experimenting with Linux on the desktop. Many more are starting to use Thunderbird and Firefox for email and web browsing, including some very large defense contractors that I won't name here. That makes the underlying desktop platform less important and makes the transition easier if they ever decide to switch.

    I see this same trend among my own customers. There is real preperation going on for NOT moving to Vista. Some of them will probably role anyway, but lately the trend is to move business critical apps to web-based alternatives and move away from MSFT proprietary clients like Outlook and IE. Preparation that makes switching the desktop OS much easier.

    I think many would merely use it for leverage to squeeze concessions out of MSFT, but based on the amount of interest and effort I'm seeing doesn't look like posing. It seems serious this time. MSFT will have to come up with better discounts. A few vouchers for training and support calls aren't going to cut it.

    Exciting times to be in IT.

    • Your experiences are very similar to ones that I have been having recently. All of our internal systems are web based which makes the end platform completely irrelevent with many people using Linux, MacOS X and windows in a small percentage.
  • Shouldn't this article be about IBM moving from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in general? I mean, Vista is still in beta form, why jump on the bandwagon about a company dissing Vista before it has even hit the store shelves. This is non-news. A company drops an as of yet unreleased product to use another product.

    All this is is flame bait. I mean, your going to get all those guys in the Linux coffers going on about how great Linux is and how much Vista sucks, but they are complaining about a product

  • What does this remind me of? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spectra72 ( 13146 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @01:07PM (#14876268)
    IBM: This is my way of sticking it to The Man.

    RandomFlunky: But, you are The Man, sir. So wouldn't you be sticking it to yourself?

    IBM: Perhaps.


    Too bad the better OS is owned by one of their competitors (and partners), otherwise I'd give them 1 year before they switched to Solaris (much like Oracle did after flirting with linux).

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